Bernie Sanders Blast The Media For Ignoring The Koch Brothers Attempt To Buy The Government

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Sen. Bernie Sanders is calling out the corporate owned media for turning a blind eye to the Koch brothers attempt steal your freedom by buying the government.

A new Media Matters study found that the networks devoted a minute of airtime each to covering the issue of money in politics over the last 19 months.

Sen. Sanders expressed his disappointment in a statement,

There is a reason why confidence in the American media is declining. More and more people say the media is not paying attention to the issues of real importance to the American people. This study confirms that.

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To my mind, the single most important issue facing our country today is that, as a result of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, we are allowing billionaires to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to elect candidates who will represent the wealthy and powerful rather than the needs of ordinary Americans. This is an issue of enormous consequence. I am disappointed, but not surprised, by the study’s finding that the major networks barely covered the issue of money in politics.

The study found that only the non-corporate owned PBS gave substantial airtime to Citizens United and money in politics. The PBS Newshour spent 1:13:51 discussing the issue. ABC, CBS, and NBC spent a combined 47:41 over 19 months on the campaign finance issue. The lack of coverage of the Citizens United/money in politics/Koch brothers story is part of a larger pattern of corporate owned media censoring stories that are important to the American people.

The corporate media benefits from the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Koch brothers and other billionaires spend on campaign ads. Of course, they aren’t going to blow the whistle on a practice that they are financially benefitting from. They don’t care about the right-wing agenda and the impact that it will have on regular people. They don’t care about people losing their voices with their own government. The media isn’t concerned by elected politicians who only represent the interests of their largest donors.

Corporate media have deemed the fact that a handful of billionaires are attacking the nation’s electoral process and fundamental democratic rights as not newsworthy. The corporate media are more than happy to dumb down the people with stories about celebrities and reality television stars, while people like the Koch brothers plot to buy the government.

Big media used to be a watchdog, now it is an enabler and part of the problem. The study confirms what most people already knew. Big media are on board with the billionaires’ agenda, as generating a profit has been placed ahead of informing the public.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association